chap 14
stroke
(a temporary obstruction of a blood vessel in the brain)
Mild Cognitive Impairment About ____ of them will become demented, but some stabilize with mild impairment and others regain their cognitive abilities.
1/2
---- percent of the elders had some form of neurocognitive disorder
14
It is estimated that approximately --% of Americans over the age of 70 have some form of dementia.
14
The rate of neurocognitive disorders increases with every decade after age ___
60
average life expectancy at birth is ab ___ for men and ____ for women a result partially of immunization, better sanitation, medical care, safe water, and antibiotics.
75; 81
Parkinson's disease
A chronic, progressive disease that is characterized by muscle tremor and rigidity and sometimes major NCD; caused by reduced dopamine production in the brain.
Lewy body disease
A form of major NCD characterized by an increase in particular abnormal cells in the brain. Symptoms include visual hallucinations, momentary loss of attention, falling, and fainting.
Centenarian
A person who has lived 100 years or more.
ageism
A prejudice whereby people are categorized and judged by their chronological age. (everyone should "act their age.")
Mild Cognitive Impairment
Affects older adults with cognitive problems who are still able to function.
A normal brain contains some beta-amyloid and some tau, but in brains with ---- these plaques and tangles proliferate, especially in the hippocampus, a brain structure crucial for memory.
Alzheimer's disease (AD)
Beginning stages o Forgetfulness o Personality changes o Memory loss eventually becomes dangerous
Alzheimer's disease (AD)
Final stage o Full-time care is needed o Communication ceases o Identity and personality are lost o Death comes 10 to 15 years after the first signs appear
Alzheimer's disease (AD)
Severe and worsening memory loss is the main symptom, but the diagnosis is not definitive until an autopsy finds extensive plaques and tangles in the cerebral cortex.
Alzheimer's disease (AD)
The most common cause of dementia, characterized by gradual deterioration of memory and personality.
Alzheimer's disease (AD)
life review
An examination of one's own role in the history of human life, engaged in by many elderly people. This can be written or oral.
Stereotype threat
Anxiety about the possibility that other people have prejudiced beliefs.
neurocognitive disorder (NCD)
Any of a number of brain diseases that affects a person's ability to remember, analyze, plan, or interact with other people.
------- may aid social skills, resilience, and even brain health
Artistic expression
frontotemporal NCDs
Brain disorders that occur with serious impairment of the frontal lobes. (Also called frontotemporal lobar degeneration.) tend to occur under age 70, unlike Alzheimer's or vascular disease
plaques
Clumps of a protein called betaamyloid, found in brain tissues surrounding the neurons.
------- becomes more common with age, but it is abnormal and pathological even in the very old.
Dementia
------ found that in old age many people gained interest in the arts, in children, and in the human experience as a whole.
Erikson
vascular disease
Formerly called vascular or multiinfarct dementia, is characterized by progressive loss of intellectual functioning caused by repeated infarcts (strokes), or temporary obstructions of blood vessels.
------- is a better predictor of cognition than age.
Health
major neurocognitive disorder (major NCD)
Irreversible loss of intellectual functioning caused by organic brain damage or disease. Formerly called dementia, becomes more common with age, but it is abnormal and pathological even in the very old.
polypharmacy
Refers to a situation in which people take many medications. The various side effects and interactions of those medications can result in NCD symptoms. " prescribing cascade" (when many interacting drugs are prescribed) may occur.
Integrity
The final stage in Erikson's model in which older people gain interest in the arts, in children, and in human experience as a whole
Self-actualization
The final stage in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, characterized by aesthetic, creative, philosophical, and spiritual understanding.
self-actualization
The final stage in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, characterized by aesthetic, creative, philosophical, and spiritual understanding.
ecological validity
The idea that cognition should be measured in natural settings and schedules
Alzheimer's disease (AD)
The most common cause of major NCD, characterized by gradual deterioration of memory and personality and marked by the formation of plaques of beta-amyloid protein and tangles of tau in the brain
average life expectancy
The number of years the average person in a particular population is likely to live.
maximum life span
The oldest possible age that members of a species can live under ideal circumstances. For humans, that age seems to be 122 years
control processes
The part of the information-processing system that regulates the analysis and flow of information. Memory and retrieval strategies, selective attention, and rules or strategies for problem solving
------ can improve cognitive ability, even for the very old.
Training
tangles
Twisted masses of threads made of a protein called tau within the neurons of the brain. These usually begin in the brains hippocampus.
------------- (remembering information for a moment before evaluating, calculating, and inferring its significance) also declines with age. Speed is critical: Older individuals take longer to perceive and process sensations, and that reduces working memory because some items ------ before they can be considered
Working memory fade
considers ppl as part of a category and not as individuals
ageism
------- interferes with nutrition, directly (reducing eating and hydration) and indirectly (destroying vitamins).
alcohol abuse
During late adulthood, ----------- become slower and less efficient.
all the major body systems
If older people suspect memory loss, ------ itself impairs their memory
anxiety
Many experts believe that creative activities—poetry and pottery, jewelry making and quilting, music and sculpture— ------ all the elderly.
benefit
Malnutrition and dehydration can also cause symptoms that may seem like ------.
brain disease
Health is crucial. Exercise, nutrition, and normal blood pressure are powerful influences on ------, and these factors predict ------- in old age.
brain health; intelligence
A key factor in how people age is how well they respond with selective optimization with compensation -------------
by choosing activities they can do well as they adjust to aging.
The leading cause of death for both women and men is ------------, a disease that is more related to risk factors than to aging. However, most elderly people do not have any particular disease.
cardiovascular disease
elderspeak reduces
cognition & communication
Deterioration of ----- correlates with almost every -------- (Walks slow? Talks slow?= thinks slow!)
cognition; motor slowdown
Together these are the executive function of the brain, the work of the prefrontal cortex
control processes
Brain size ------- with each passing year—less than 1 percent per year through most of adulthood but accelerating after age 60, such that a typical brain at age 80 is 20 percent smaller than at age 30
decreases
Older adults are more likely to rely on prior knowledge, general principles, familiarity, rules of thumb, and other top-down decision-making strategies based on _________ reasoning.
deductive
Regular physical exercise: Reduces the incidence of all forms of ------ by half.
dementia
The most common reversible condition that is mistaken for major NCD is ------ Ongoing, untreated ------ increases the risk of major NCD
depression
Drugs ----- cure NCDs, but some slow progression.
do not
wisdom ------ necessarily increase with age
does not
very demeaning to elderly
elder speak
So cognition is aided if people
exercise, eat well, and avoid most drugs
------ memory (recall of learned material) shows more loss than -----memory (recognition and habits), which means that names are harder to remember than actions
explicit; implicit
older ppl They revert back to ------, and often inferior, cognitive patterns.
familiar
source amnesia
forgetting the origin of a fact, idea, or snippet of conversation. remember info but not where it came from
in -----------, parts of the brain that regulate emotions and social behavior (especially the amygdala and prefrontal cortex) deteriorate. Emotional and personality changes are the main symptoms they usually progress rapidly, leading to death in about five years.
frontotemporal NCDs
Alzheimer's disease is partly ------. If it develops in middle age, the affected person either has trisomy-21 (Down syndrome) or has inherited one of three genes: amyloid precursor protein (APP), presenilin 1, or presenilin 2. For these people, the disease progresses quickly, reaching the last phase within three to five years.
genetic
The ------- (storing memories) and the ------- (deciding and planning) shrink most
hippocampus; prefrontal cortex
Since -------- slows with age, older people are less likely to recognize and remedy their hunger and thirst, and thus they may inadvertently impair their cognition.
homeostasis
the number of centenarians is
increasing
The first step in information processing is ----, in which the brain receives information from the senses.
input
The information-processing approach to memory after age 65 separates cognition into four steps
input (sensing), storage (memory), programming (control processes), and output
Dementia
irreversible, pathological loss of brain functioning refers to severely impaired judgment, memory, or problem-solving ability can occur before old age and is not inevitable
Senses become ____ acute with age. Many ____ (visual, hearing, etc.) are available to compensate for sensory loss. The most common visual impairments among the elderly are cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration.
less aids
Evidence finds that older adults are as intellectually sharp as they always were on many tasks. However, with multitasking that requires younger adults to use all their cognitive resources, older adults are --------, perhaps because they already are using their brains to the max
less proficient
about 8 percent of the aged population. many people are not diagnosed, or that the rate has decreased.
major neurocognitive disorder (major NCD)
compared with younger adults, older adults use ---- parts of their brains, including both hemispheres, to solve problems
more
wokring memory affects ability to
multitask (requires screening out distractions and inhibiting irrelevant thoughts while focusing on two or more relevant tasks).
Flynn found that the intellectual ability of each ------ is better than that of the previous one. Perhaps the increasing complexity of modern life requires continuing improvement, with urbanization and globalization demanding intellectual expansion.
new cohort
Furthermore, ---- neurons form and ------ grow in adulthood
new; dendrites
The aging digestive system is less efficient but needs more ----- and fewer -----
nutrients; calories
Age is not an accurate predictor of dependency, so some gerontologists use terms that make no reference to chronological age:
optimal aging, usual aging, and impaired aging.
Gradual decline in ---- of primary mental abilities (verbal meaning, spatial orientation, inductive reasoning, number ability, word fluency) is normal.
output
Greater hearing losses correlated with greater declines . Many other researchers likewise find that small input losses have a notable effect on ------
output
final step in information processing is
output
-------- —even more than good nutrition and mental exercise—prevents postpones, and slows cognitive loss of all kinds
physical exercise
Instead of using analysis and forethought, the elderly tend to rely on ------ knowledge, general principles, familiarity, and rules of thumb as they make decisions, basing actions on ----- experiences and ------ emotions
prior; past; current
That is one reason for the interest in mild NCDs: They often (though not always) ------ to major problems.
progress
Problems with sensory-input may be insidious because the older person may not ------- he or she has missed registering the information.
realize
the volume of gray matter (crucial for processing new experiences) is ------, in part because the cortex becomes thinner with every decade
reduced
Some developmentalists believe that impaired ----- is an underlying cause of intellectual lapses in old age because elders have many thoughts and memories that they cannot access.
retrieval
the -------- person might have a deeper spirituality than ever; might be especially appreciative of nature; or might find life more amusing, laughing often at himself or herself
self-actualization
Information must cross the ------- —the divide between what is sensed and what is not—before a person can think about it.
sensory threshold
transient ischemic attacks (TIAs)
series of strokes, or ministrokes
One cognitive change that everyone experiences is that with age, we think more ______. In addition, the brain _______ as it ages. Even so, older adults use ______ parts of the brain when thinking than younger adults.
slowly; shrinks; more
Responses to ------- include dyeing hair, undergoing plastic surgery, dressing in youthful clothes, and moving quickly to look agile (or lively).
stereotype threat
The interruption in blood flow reduces oxygen, destroying part of the brain. Symptoms (blurred vision, weak or paralyzed limbs, slurred speech, and mental confusion) suddenly appear.
strokes
Those who will die soon (whether they are 75 or 105) may experience "--------," a faster loss of cognitive ability in the final years of their lives.
terminal decline
Speed of processing would explain why memory for vocabulary (especially recognition memory, not recall) is often ------- by age
unaffected
The idea is that the body wears out, part by part, after years of use. Organ reserve and repair processes are exhausted as the decades pass
wear and tear
When older people can take their time and concentrate, their ---------- seems as good as ever.
working memory
Brain slowdown reduces --------- because older individuals take longer to --------- the sensations they experience.
working memory; perceive and process
prospective memory fades notably with age
—remembering to do something in the future.
